Fortune Quotes - Page 28

• There is some help for all the defects of fortune; for, if a man cannot attain to the length of his wishes, he may have his remedy by cutting of them shorter.

  Abraham Cowley

  Cutting, Men, Wish

  Abraham Cowley, Thomas Sprat (1826). “Prose works of Abraham Cowley ; including his essays in prose and verse”, p.221

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I know I am--that simplest bliss
  The millions of my brothers miss.
  I know the fortune to be born,
  Even to the meanest wretch they scorn.

  Bayard Taylor

  Brother, Missing, Bliss

  6 Copy quote

• Gipsies, who every ill can cure,
  Except the ill of being poor
  Who charms 'gainst love and agues sell,
  Who can in hen-roost set a spell,
  Prepar'd by arts, to them best known
  To catch all feet except their own,
  Who, as to fortune, can unlock it,
  As easily as pick a pocket.

  Charles Churchill

  Art, Feet, Hens

  Charles Churchill, “The Ghost - Book I”

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• What it 't to us, if taxes rise or fall,
  Thanks to our fortune, we pay none at all.
  Let muckworms who in dirty acres deal,
  Lament those hardships which we cannot feel,
  His grace who smarts, may bellow if he please,
  But must I bellow too, who sit at ease?
  By custom safe, the poets' numbers flow,
  Free as the light and air some years ago.
  No statesman e'er will find it worth his pains
  To tax our labours, and excise our brains.
  Burthens like these with earthly buildings bear,
  No tributes laid on castles in the air.

  Charles Churchill

  Pain, Smart, Dirty

  Charles Churchill (1866). “Poetical Works: With a Memoir by James L. Hannay and Copious Notes by W. Tooke”, p.89

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• According to bourgeois standards, those who are completely unlucky and unsuccessful are automatically barred from competition, which is the life of society. Good fortune is identified with honor, and bad luck with shame.

  Hannah Arendt

  Competition, Luck, Honor

  Hannah Arendt (1968). “Imperialism: Part Two Of The Origins Of Totalitarianism”, p.33, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The sum of all that makes a just man happy
  Consists in the well choosing of his wife:
  And there, well to discharge it, does require
  Equality of years, of birth, of fortune;
  For beauty being poor, and not cried up
  By birth or wealth, can truly mix with neither.
  And wealth, when there's such difference in years,
  And fair descent, must make the yoke uneasy.

  Philip Massinger

  Men, Years, Differences

  Thomas Dekker, Philip Massinger (2010). “Elizabethan Drama II”, p.875, Cosimo, Inc.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• This stuff tastes awful; I could have made a fortune selling it in my health-food store.

  Woody Allen

  Stuff, Awful, Taste

  11 Copy quote

• There are some tempers--how shall I describe them--formed either of such impenetrable matter, or wrought up by habitual selfishness to such an utter insensibility of what becomes of the fortunes of their fellow-creatures, as if they were not partakers of the same nature, or had no lot or connection at all with the species.

  Laurence Sterne

  Selfishness, Connections, Matter

  Laurence Sterne (1873). “The Works of Laurence Sterne ...: With a Life of the Author”, p.26, London : Bickers, H. Sotheran

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• If fortune wishes to make a man estimable, she gives him virtues; if she wishes to make him esteemed, she gives him success.

  Joseph Joubert

  Success, Men, Giving

  Joseph Joubert (1896). “Pensées of Joubert”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Everything is 'colossalized' - events, fortunes, accidents, climate, conversation, ambitions - everything is in the extreme ... They can't even have a tram run off a line, which in England or France might kill one or two people, without its making a holocaust of half a street full. ... The thing which surprises me is they should still employ animals of normal size; one would expect to see elephants and mammoths drawing the hansoms and carts!

  Elinor Glyn

  Running, Ambition, Animal

  8 Copy quote

• I attribute my good fortune to the simple fact that I have always tried to write straight from my own heart to the hearts of others.

  Marie Corelli

  Writing, Heart, Simple

  Marie Corelli (2017). “Delphi Complete Works of Marie Corelli (Illustrated)”, p.10877, Delphi Classics

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Nature has concatenated our fortunes and affections together with indissoluble bands of mutual sympathy.

  Isaac Barrow

  Sympathy, Together, Band

  4 Copy quote

• In the case of women, it is of the living and unpublished blood that the violent world has professed to be delicate and ashamed. See the curious history of the political rights of woman under the Revolution. On the scaffold she enjoyed an ungrudged share in the fortunes of party. Political life might be denied her, but that seems a trifle when you consider how generously she was permitted political death.

  Alice Meynell

  Party, Rights, Blood

  4 Copy quote

• Emulation is grief arising from seeing one's self, exceeded or excelled by his concurrent, together with hope to equal or exceed him in time to come, by his own ability. But envy is the same grief joined with pleasure conceived in the imagination of some ill-fortune that may befall him.

  Thomas Hobbes

  Grief, Self, Envy

  Thomas Hobbes, John Charles Addison Gaskin (1999). “The Elements of Law, Natural and Politic: Part I, Human Nature, Part II, De Corpore Politico ; with Three Lives”, p.54, Oxford University Press, USA

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• We must calculate not on the weather, nor on fortune, but upon God and ourselves. He may fail us in the gratification of our wishes, but never in the encounter with our exigencies.

  William Gilmore Simms

  Weather, Wish, Encounters

  William Gilmore Simms (1853). “Egeria: Or Voices of Thought and Counsel, for the Woods and Wayside”, p.41

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Happy the man whom indulgent fortune allows to pay to virtue what he owes to nature, and to make a generous gift of what must otherwise be ravished from him by cruel necessity.

  David Hume

  Men, Pay, Virtue

  David Hume (2016). “Delphi Complete Works of David Hume (Illustrated)”, p.668, Delphi Classics

  6 Copy quote

  Show source

• Where is the reward of virtue? and what recompense has nature provided for such important sacrifices as those of life and fortune, which we must often make to it? O sons of earth! Are ye ignorant of the value of this celestial mistress? And do ye meanly inquire for her portion, when ye observe her genuine beauty?

  David Hume

  Son, Sacrifice, Ignorant

  David Hume, Stephen Copley, Andrew Edgar (2008). “Selected Essays”, p.90, Oxford University Press

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• The skyscraper and the twentieth century are synonymous; the tall building is the landmark of our age. ... Shaper of cities and fortunes, it is the dream, past and present, acknowledged or unacknowledged, of almost every architect.

  Ada Louise Huxtable

  Dream, Past, Cities

  Ada Louise Huxtable (2010). “On Architecture: Collected Reflections on a Century of Change”, p.132, Bloomsbury Publishing USA

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• The money that is spent in elections is absolutely unconscionable - even if it's private money. It's true that one's not corrupted by the expenditure of one's own money, but to some extent the system is. We cannot have a system in which the only people you can count on for a vote that doesn't look as though it might be a vote for a special-interest group are people with enormous fortunes.

  Millicent Fenwick

  People, Special, Politics

  Millicent Fenwick (1982). “Speaking up”, Harpercollins

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• For two generations groups of women have given their lives and their fortunes to secure the vote for the sex and hundreds of thousands of other women are now giving all the time at their command. No class of men in our own or any other country has made one-tenth the effort nor sacrificed one-tenth as much for the vote.

  Carrie Chapman Catt

  Country, Sex, Men

  14 Copy quote

• Even if their outward fortunes could be absolutely equalized, there would be, from individual constitution alone, an aristocracy and a democracy in every land. The fearful by nature would compose an aristocracy, the hopeful by nature a democracy, were all other causes of divergence done away.

  Harriet Martineau

  Hope, Fear, Government

  4 Copy quote

• there is undoubtedly something irritating about the favorites of fortune.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  Luck, Irritating

  6 Copy quote

• What fortune teller would ever have had the nerve to predict that the best years of my life would turn out to be my old age?

  Helene Hanff

  Years, Age, Nerves

  5 Copy quote

• O Fortune, how thy restless, wavering state has fraught with cares my troubled wit!

  Elizabeth I

  Care, Wavering, Woe

  8 Copy quote

• We acquire the love of people who, being in our proximity, are presumed to know us; and we receive reputation or celebrity, from such as are not personally acquainted with us. Merit secures to us the regard of our honest neighbors, and good fortune that of the public. Esteem is the harvest of a whole life spent in usefulness; but reputation is often bestowed upon a chance action, and depends most on success.

  George Augustus Henry Sala

  People, Merit, Reputation

  4 Copy quote